


eternity cuts between us

by patchy



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Animal Abuse, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Experimental Style, F/M, Mild Gore, Not Really Character Death, Siblings, Suspense, Time Travel, it's pretty canon-typical, maybe too canon-compliant with all the repetition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patchy/pseuds/patchy
Summary: Akane and Junpei reaching out to each other across the gulf of time and space. Before, during, and after the events of 999.
Relationships: Kurashiki Akane & Kurashiki Aoi, Kurashiki Akane/Tenmyouji Junpei
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	eternity cuts between us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seasaltmemories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasaltmemories/gifts).



> I really enjoyed revisiting this fandom and I’m glad I got to write this as a yuletide gift! To be honest I find the characterization shift in the sequels somewhat disconcerting, so I tried to focus mostly on the first game but lead into some later beats. I hope it’s somewhere close to the “atmosphere” you wanted! I hope it's a fun read.

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Aoi pulls open the passenger door of the SUV just as Akane is riffling through the Walgreens bag.

It’s silly, but she hadn’t planned on him interrupting her in the silence of the desert at night—the eyeshadow tray slips from her hand and drops to the floor of the car. Face down. She picks it up and sighs when she sees that the powder has already fallen out and fractured into the carpet.

Oh well. There’s still the mascara, the eyeliner, and the lipgloss. It’s better than nothing.

Aoi slides into the passenger seat and shuts the door behind him. He says nothing as she carefully drags the brown eyeliner pencil along the top edge of one eye, then the other, but when she’s finished that and is still not looking at him, he can’t hold back any longer.

“Are you seriously doing your makeup right now?” he asks, a touch concerned. His face is bloodless in the yellow of the dome light, tight around the eyes with tiredness. It’s nearly five in the morning.

Akane hadn’t planned on doing all of this, to be honest. Thirty-six hours ago she’d said goodbye to her makeup pouch and other worldly possessions back in her room in Japan, then they’d flown over the ocean to America in a private plane with bound and drugged passengers hidden on board.

The cheap makeup was an impulse buy from the last drugstore they’d driven past, before they’d taken a turn off the road and everything had flattened out into neverending desert. It was a spontaneous action that had felt freeing after weeks of meticulously planned and executed actions, a frivolous purchase thrown in with the bottled water and iced coffee.

“Yeah, I am doing my makeup. Why not? I couldn’t fall asleep again, not when we’re going to start the game in a couple of hours.” Akane turns to her brother with a sunny smile. “What do you think, Aoi, does it look alright?”

“Needs mascara,” replies Aoi, jutting his chin out at the thin bottle in her hand. Akane hands it to him and widens her eyes pleadingly.

Aoi sighs and unscrews the cap. He leans in, and Akane shuts her eyes so he can apply the mascara with light strokes. His pinky, curled, rests on her cheek to stabilize it, an unspoken question mark on her skin.

_Is this because of him?_

“I know what you’re thinking. But it’s not that, I know he’ll try to save me no matter what I put on my face. I trust Jumpy.”

“Well, yeah, he’ll have bigger problems if he doesn’t, that’s for sure,” snorts Aoi. The edge of a threat encroaches on his offhanded tone, but tonight there’s an unspoken agreement not to retread old arguments, and Akane lets it slide.

“The makeup is just for fun. I want to look nice. We haven’t seen each other in years—I want to make a good impression,” says Akane.

In the same way, neither of them mention that she’d technically seen Junpei less than a week ago. Granted, he hadn’t been able to see her face from behind the gas mask, but once the nonary game started she’d be going into the fray as herself. Bubbly, positive Akane Kurashiki who is _oh so excited_ to run into an old friend, despite the chilling circumstances begetting their reunion.

Aoi moves on to her right eye as her mind wanders.

She doesn’t think it will be hard, compared to pretending like she’s never met the other participants. Her stomach flops uneasily as she considers it. The only person who’s likely to recognize their faces is the police detective, and he’d have to fight through the double dose of soporil and nine years of forgotten memories—

The hand against her cheek withdraws and Aoi recaps the mascara wand. Akane keeps her eyes closed, knowing that if she opens them now, the black would smudge.

How can she explain it? Today is the end of her life as she knows it, one way or the other. Tomorrow and beyond, anything could happen. Nine years of knowledge that has both saved and condemned her runs out a mere nine hours from when they begin today. After that, she’ll either be free…

...Or it won’t matter to her anymore.

But Akane’s determined, if not for herself, then for everyone else, to aim for the best outcome.

The mascara should be dry by now. She blinks, lashes slightly heavier than she’s used to, and then checks her makeup in the tiny rectangle of the mirror, turning this way and that as Aoi rolls his eyes beside her.

“I think we should do something with my hair too.” she says thoughtfully, ignoring his behaviour. “A half updo?”

Aoi groans but, without her having to ask, is already motioning for her to turn around in the seat so that he has better access. He scoops up her hair with practiced ease and combs out the tangles with his fingers.

He’s learnt how to do all the hairstyles she’s ever wished for, back when he was eight to her five and their mother had left them alone in the world. Akane had returned the favour, years later, when she’d found him in the bathroom mixing hair bleach, the day after he’d decided to drop out of school.

When the sun rises, they’ll finish the final touches and set up the keys, the bombs, the bracelets, the recordings, the REDs and the DEADs. But right now, with the predawn sky barely lightening outside the car window, Akane closes her eyes and anchors herself to this feeling.

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All that’s left of the ninth man is a mangled lump of flesh and cloth lying on the ground, a step or two into the hallway. Glistening splatters of blood and gore reach halfway up the walls and are beginning to run down in rivulets on the smooth metal of the door.

The smell hits a second or two later and Junpei tries not to gag. Someone mumbles, disjointedly, disbelievingly. There’s a high-pitched scream.

The doors swing shut and Akane collapses to the ground.

“June! Are you okay?”

Junpei rushes to her side and gets an arm under her, hoisting her up and guiding her to the nearest armchair. Her face is flushed, eyelashes black against her cheeks, and somewhere in the back of his brain Junpei notes how pretty she is up close.

_NOT the time, Junpei, focus!_

Junpei presses the back of his wrist to her forehead tentatively—She’s burning up.

Where did this fever come from? Has she been sick from the start? They need to get out of here, quickly. Not that they didn’t have to before, but…

Before, there was the tiniest chance that it was all an elaborate prank. An expensive, convoluted joke. But now there’s a body on the other side of door five, a body that was a live human just seconds beforehand. The air feels heavy in Junpei’s lungs, panic mounting steadily like the swell of a rising tide.

“Why did this happen…? Why did this happen!” sobs Akane, pressing her hands to her eyes.

Lost in their own thoughts, nobody answers her. Silence falls…

...and then the clock strikes ten. Only eight hours left.

Santa’s the first to lose it.

“Fuck!” he bursts out. “I’ve had enough of this crap! How long are we gonna waste time like this? We need to go go _go_!”

He brushes off Lotus’ comments and starts ranting about how they have to move on. How _he_ won’t fall prey to the same traps that the ninth man did, how _he_ wouldn’t get killed by Zero that easily, only to be interrupted by a peal of laughter from Snake.

“What’s so funny, huh?” barks Santa.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just thinking that it’s not a trap in the way you think it is,” says Snake. “Allow me to explain.”

The quiet confidence in his words pulls Junpei in, and the rest of the room, too. Snake pauses a second, flicking the invisible dust off the cuffs of his jacket, and then he begins to speak.

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“HELLO! Everyone? Could you come over here for a moment?”

A clear and steady voice breaks through the racket.

Light, the blind boy who stands about a head taller than the rest of them, beckons to everyone from the centre of the hospital room. Akane exchanges a curious look with Aoi and hops off the cot she’d been sitting on to make her way over.

The others shuffle over as well. One of the boys, Kaoru, has hair sticking up like a birds’ nest from the scuffle he had with Tomoya earlier. Nona is holding back sniffles, eyes still red at the corners. They’ve made it to the second set of doors but it’s taken them over half the allotted time and the group is falling apart under the stress.

Akane just wishes she was home, or at school, or just anywhere away from this dreadful place. She’s luckier than the others, to not have been separated from her brother, and that’s the only thing that’s stopping her from breaking down into tears. That, along with the tiny doll kept safe in her pocket.

When everyone has formed a loose circle around Light, he smiles at them and starts to weave a story. He tells them about his sister, a girl called Clover who’s turning nine today, and how he’d been picking four-leaf clovers as a gift for her when he had been kidnapped.

Light’s story has all of them, even fifteen-year-old Aoi who usually scoffs at Akane’s taste in fairy tales, hanging on to every word. Halfway through, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bunch of four-leaf clovers.

“My sister is in building Q, trying desperately to send me messages. We all have someone dear to us in building Q right now. If we’re going to get out of here and find them, we’re going to need trust and love and faith in each other. If we can take all three of those to heart, then I promise that good luck will come our way.”

Light’s voice echoes in the empty hospital bay. Akane feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, feels the nervous fluttering in her stomach start to quiet.

“Did you know that the four leaves of a clover represent trust, love, faith and luck?” continues Light. “Those are known as leaf words. If you believe in what I’ve told you and you understand, then I want each of you to have one of these. As a promise between friends...”

Light places the clovers in the flat of his palm and hands them out in a circle. Akane watches as each of them takes from the pile with the utmost care. Like they’re handling something precious.

“Don’t forget. So long as you have them, we’ll always be connected. Do you understand?” asks Light solemnly.

The mood in the room is the polar opposite of what it had been just minutes ago. A sense of calmness blankets down on them. Akane slips the clover into the pocket opposite her doll, careful not to crush the leaves as she does.

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Junpei is trying not to panic.

It’s not a big deal. They’re already in a death game, is it that much worse that they’re now trapped in a freezer with no way out?

Junpei sneaks a look at Santa, who looks like he’s trying to fold into himself. Well. His lips are turning blue already, that’s...probably a bad sign considering they’ve been in here for less than five minutes.

“I-if we don’t get moving, we’ll become permanent residents!” says Junpei.

Santa and Akane nod. Well, it’s a nod from Akane and Santa does more of a full body twitch. His choice of clothing really isn’t doing him any favours. They split up and start searching.

A couple of minutes later and they reconvene at the centre of the room with a bunch of dubiously helpful items. A big hunk of meat frozen solid with something inside, an empty plastic bottle, a double-stranded rope stiff with the cold, and a little sachet of something that had been inside the high-pressure safe.

“W-what’s that thing and wh-why’s it s-smoking?” asks Santa.

“I-It’s probably dried i-i-ice. Sublimating straight to a gas at t-temperatures above negative s-seventy-eight degrees Celsius,” explains Akane.

“How do you know that?” asks Junpei in wonder. Do people just go about memorizing these things?

Akane straightens up, squaring her shoulders and puffing out her chest.

“Hehe. D-despite my looks I’m the Qleeen—the _Queen_ of Random Knowledge!”

“Looks bad to mess up when you’re showing off,” teases Junpei. “Is your mouth getting numb from the cold?”

Akane splutters out an unintelligible string of sounds.

“Now you’re just doing it on purpose, aren’t you,” says Junpei.

Santa clears his throat. “Are you two done flirting? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re still stuck in a FUCKING FREEZER here!”

Junpei makes eye contact with Akane as they both try and fail to look appropriately chastised.

From quiet panic to giggling in a freezer in a matter of minutes, it’s incredible how much better Akane makes him feel better just by being here. If there’s one good thing about this mess, it’s meeting her again.

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Akane’s not sure how long she lies on the ground, drifting in and out of consciousness, before she hears the doors hiss open again and the pounding rush of footsteps down the concrete steps.

“Oh no, _no_ , _NO_. Kanny!” cries Junpei.

He sounds so distressed, but Akane’s traitorous heart leaps when she hears his voice. She hadn’t thought she’d be able to see him again in this timeline, but here he was, kneeling beside her and gingerly pulling her into his arms, careless of the blood leaking out around her.

The world lurches on its axis, and when she blinks the storm of stars away, he’s got her propped up in a half-seated position leaning on the wall.

And suddenly—She hadn’t been sad, before, but now she could feel the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She’d known that she was as good as dead as soon as Hongou stabbed her and, with a malevolent grin, didn’t even bother to finish her off before he sprinted after Clover through the double doors. But she hadn’t known just how much she had failed until now.

That Junpei’s here and nobody else is—means that everyone else is dead, means that she’d foolishly gambled with human life and had lost not just the hand but the whole game. In millions of other universes out there, she isn’t dying and the nonary game hasn’t fallen apart at the seams, but in this one the end draws close. Even the pain is fading now.

Junpei is saying something, looking off to the side where the submarine is, but when he makes to get up she clutches at his sleeves desperately.

“Don’t go. I want...you beside me...When I...”

He settles back down, face stricken with grief. It’s so different from the Junpei of her memories, the sunny boy who’d been her best friend, and she struggles to pull up the memory of those long-gone days.

“Did...Did you know...Back when we were kids...You meant a lot to me, Jumpy...”

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Junpei hears the sobbing before he sees her.

The door to the rabbit hutch is unlocked. He pushes in then freezes at the sight that greets him.

Akane is hugging herself into a ball and crying, big wet sobs wracking her frame. In front of her, thrown carelessly onto the hay, are the mutilated bodies of the class rabbits.

The brownish lump must be Marron, though he’s missing most of his fur. Kurumi’s body is so small he doesn’t recognize her at first, until Junpei realizes with horror that it’s because there’s only half of her left. Nori is missing entirely but…he’s probably dead too…

The cruelty with which they’ve been torn apart is devastating. Junpei looks at the crying girl beside him and feels—

Akane lifts her face up, blotchy red all over and covered in tears. Junpei takes her hand and squeezes it.

“We’ll figure out who did this. You and me, together.” promises Junpei.

Akane stares at him, wide-eyed and trusting, and nods feverently.

“We’ll stop them from coming back to hurt the guinea pigs,” she says, and with the hand not holding Junpei’s, she uses the sleeve to wipe her face.

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“I want to go through door three,” says Junpei steadily.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Aoi’s voice is fraying with exasperation, but Akane knows her brother well enough to hear the wariness beneath it. “That’s impossible. We can’t make it without leaving someone behind. Just pick between door seven and eight.”

“No, I have an idea. Door three is possible,” replies Junpei coolly.

_Five plus seven makes twelve makes three, but it’s short one person. Five plus seven plus one plus eight makes twenty-one makes three, but Hongou is passed out on the cot and it’d be too hard to drag his body through the doors._

Akane’s thoughts chase themselves around her head. She’s as confused as the rest of them but for once she’s not pretending.

Junpei taps his own bracelet, then asks seven and herself to authenticate as well. She complies, the numbers still spinning in her head.

_Five plus seven plus six plus—but no, that leaves some people behind…_

“And now what?” asks Aoi testily. “What are you up to?”

“I’m not up to anything. I’m just waiting. Waiting for either you or Lotus and Clover.”

The answer dawns on her, the same moment she sees Aoi’s face twist into a scowl.

“You son of a bitch! Everything you were saying is just bullshit! You just pulled all that to get through the same door as June!” he shouts.

Akane can’t help but look at Junpei, who is deliberately not looking in her direction. Is he really just doing this...because of their promise?

And then Lotus grabs Clover’s hand, but Aoi is faster than them—He _has_ to be—And slams his hand down on the RED. Junpei wastes no time in bringing down the lever.

They’re hurtling down a path of choices Akane hadn’t foreseen, but the door is already swinging open and Junpei pulls her into it, his hand over hers.

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“Why are you giving me this anyway? It seems really sudden,” asks Akane.

She pets the yarn hair of the doll that Junpei had just gifted her. Junpei wonders if she likes it, really hopes that she does.

“Ah...Well...You know how after June we aren’t...We aren’t going to see each other that much? I mean, you know, we won’t be in the same schools anymore...I just thought that I’d, um, you know,” he stutters out.

For a second he’s thankful that his face is all swollen up because otherwise the blood rushing to it would be easy to see.

But Akane grins at him, face lighting up. “Oh! I just thought of what I can call it. How about ‘June’?”

“O-okay.”

She’s giving him an easy way out, probably noticing how nervous he is, but Junpei’s already resolved to tell her how important she was when he bought the doll—Backing down now is out of the question.

“I just um, I just thought that if I got you this, and if the doll reminded you of me, then we’d always stay together. Even if, you know, we’d be at different schools. If something bad happens, you can hold the doll and pray. I’ll come…wherever you are.”

Junpei looks up at her, having finished his piece, and is startled by the look on her face. Is she about to cry? Did he mess up? He’s about to open his mouth to apologize but she beats him to it.

“Thank you. Thank you so much, Jumpy,” says Akane, her voice quavering, “I’ll never forget you, I promise.”

And then big fat tears well up in her eyes and start to roll down her face, but she’s smiling through them. Junpei looks at her, trying to commit everything about this moment to memory.

The grass, the hill, the ache in his body from being ganged up on earlier. The sunset, the promise, Akane’s favourite pink sweater and her hands clutching June the doll. Her shoulder pressed to his.

“I’ll never forget you either,” says Junpei.

This really is the last day they’ll get to see each other for a long time.

He has nothing more to say. For once, even Akane, who’s usually full of strange facts and interesting stories, is at a loss for more words. But neither of them stand up to go home.

They sit as the sun dips low in the sky towards the buildings, painting the world crimson. They sit until the sun has dipped below the horizon and the red light in the sky melts to long golden rays that cast dragging shadows from the buildings onto the hills. They sit until the sun vanishes beyond the rim, until the last brightness fades from the sky and there’s no more sunlight left at all.

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Akane has pulled ahead of the rest of the group, but she doesn’t want to go too far by herself, so she stops to wait. She slips her hands inside her jean skirt pockets looking for comfort, but it’s only now that she notices something missing.

“Oh no, where is it?? Did I drop Jumpy’s present?”

She looks around on the ground. Nothing. She thinks back. She knows she’d had it when crawling through the vents, so had she lost it after getting out?

Akane bites her lips, then ducks out to one of the landings and hides behind the door. She waits until she hears the thunder of a herd of people rush up the spiral staircase, then pushes open the door and takes the staircase in the opposite direction: down.

There’s no sign of any canvas doll. Not on the stairs or on the ground. She rushes through the hallways, remembering the twists and turns they’d taken in reverse order, and finally finds herself outside the incinerator.

There! On the ground near the vent opening! It’s her doll!

Akane runs past the incinerator doors to where her doll is and scoops it up. When she turns back, ready to catch up with the others, she finds her way blocked by a man who’s just stepped out the incinerator doors. He must be one of the bad guys.

“How wonderful you’ve decided to come back,” says the man with a chilling smile. “Come with me, we must continue the experiment.”

Akane is forced into an unwanted game of tag with a bully twice her height and armspan. She’s caught at once, her forearm trapped in a bruising grip, and dragged mercilessly towards the incinerator.

Akane screams and shrieks and struggles but his pull is relentless. She’s all alone, no way to fight back. The doll she’d come back to get lies discarded on the floor.

 _Help_ , she thinks, _help me, Jumpy_!

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The ecstatic high of connecting with younger Akane across the impossible chasm of time lasts for...about a week.

At the time, Junpei had been so happy that he’d been able to save her. So, so happy that the solution had stopped her countdown that he’d spent a whole minute basking in it, forgetting for a moment that he was in mortal peril himself. And all throughout the sprint up the spiral staircase, bursting out the door to be greeted by blinding sunlight and sand, he’d known in the back of his head that she was running with him, laughing with him, breaking free nine years ago just like he was now.

The sense of connection he felt held true as they whizzed through the desert landscape in the car that’d been waiting for them outside with the keys in the ignition. With Clover at the wheel and Lotus egging her on, they raced after fresh tracks in the sand while Junpei braced himself against the seat and tried not to be crushed between Seven and Light.

What would he say when he saw her again?

He didn’t know, but in the end, it didn’t matter.

They stopped for a stranger by a broken-down car who could’ve given Lotus a run for her money based on how she was dressed, and then they were caught and questioned before being escorted, one captive short, to the departures at LAS.

Twenty hours later an exhausted Junpei fishes his spare key out from under the flower pots at the entrance.

It’s a good thing he doesn’t have to contact his landlord, but on the other hand, this same crappy security had probably been easy for Akane to circumvent on the night she’d kidnapped him.

He pushes open the door, half expecting to find—He doesn’t know what he expects to find. But he’s disappointed, anyway, when all he sees is his room the exact way he’d left it.

The curtains are drawn shut and he goes to pull them open, and he finds his wallet, keys and cellphone laid out neatly on his writing desk. He turns the phone on and waits impatiently for it to connect to a network.

It takes a moment, but then there’s a gentle buzz. Among his unread texts there’s a message from an unknown number and he opens it, pulse picking up. The message is a link to a Line ID profile.

It’s a minimal profile with a picture of some body of water as the profile pic. The ID is a string of seemingly random characters. He sends a request and it’s accepted immediately.

A chat pops up.

_Is this Junpei?_

_Yeah,_ sends Junpei, then hesitates.

Is she mad at him or something? To be calling him that instead of Jumpy?

_Seems like you made it back alright. I’ll add you to the group chat._

And then he’s been added to a room. Messages pop up in quick succession.

_Junpei! You’re alive!_

_Took you long enough, kid._

This... he’s does a quick count. There are five people, himself included, and one of them is clearly Clover, so Light is likely one of the others, the all-black profile picture perhaps. The remaining one is probably Seven. And that means…

Oh. He’s a fool. It was Lotus who texted him her Line ID.

The disappointment crashes down like a heavy curtain and Junpei drops the phone onto his mattress, rolling over and groaning into the crook of his arm. He can’t believe he’d thought it was Akane.

_“Do you think she cares about you?”_

Junpei remembers the question being asked by the SOIS agent who’d been in charge of interrogating him after the ordeal. It had been deliberately neutral in tone, but he’d bristled at the suggestion anyway.

_“Of course she does! She cares about all of us, we wouldn’t even have had a car to drive here otherwise. We wouldn’t be alive.”_

_The official scratched a note down on his clipboard._

_“Do you know the current whereabouts of Akane Kurashiki or plan to make contact with her for any reason?”_

_“No, I don’t know where she is,” said Junpei through gritted teeth._

The same sorts of questions had been posed again and again, trying to wring any sort of useful knowledge from his head. But Junpei knew nothing about where Akane had gone or what she was planning to do.

Now, lying spread-eagled on the bed, he allows himself to do what he’d refused to even think about in SOIS custody. He closes his eyes and tries to open the channel between them, remember what it felt like when they’d been connected through the morphogenetic field. But nothing comes. Radio silence.

After a couple of minutes he has to admit that he’s got nothing. And then, the last hope exhausted, he finds that buried underneath there had been anger all along.

He’s not angry because she had risked his life and many others’ for a high-stakes game with deathly prizes. Her own life had been in the balance too, after all. A guaranteed death unless she could recreate the situation she’d seen through his eyes nine years ago, a catch-22 where nobody knew if a paradox by inaction would kill her, or if she’d die in the attempt to replicate her future.

No, he’s not angry that she took selfish risks. Junpei would have done the same in a pinch, and he thinks that many other people too.

At the heart of it all he’s just angry that she’s left him behind.

▄ ▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄

**Author's Note:**

> There’s a puzzle hidden in this fic as a tribute to the nonary games. It’s challenging and a bit pretentious (and if I made any transcription mistakes I’m sorry in advance!) but i’d love to hear if anyone gave it a shot
> 
> here’s a hint...  search up “eternity cuts between us” with the quotation marks included 
> 
> and here’s the full answer…  It’s a Japanese morse code transcription of an excerpt from a piece of poetry that I find really suits Akane and Junpei. Maybe you can think of it as what Akane is thinking, after she leaves Junpei in the desert.   
> Here is part of Sagawa Chika’s “Circulation”, translated:  
> That day,  
> I am as sad as the skin of the boy in the sky.  
> Eternity cuts between us.  
> I lose countless images to that other side.  
> 


End file.
